


black in the moonlight

by paintoolsigh



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: M/M, and they were ROOMMATES, not super graphic but still some violence given the subject matter, oh my god they were roommates, serial killer minhyuk, vampire hyungwon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-11-21 02:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintoolsigh/pseuds/paintoolsigh
Summary: Hyungwon thirsts for blood literally. Minhyuk thirsts for blood figuratively.They find a compromise.





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> i uh wasn't expecting to write this. this based on some sketches i posted on twitter which you can find:  
> [here](https://twitter.com/sigh0nara/status/1082896064942723072) and [here](https://twitter.com/sigh0nara/status/1106821471668600832)
> 
> not sure how long or where i'm going with this but it be like that sometimes
> 
> this wouldn't have happened without the help of [wonnietv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heoneybee/pseuds/wonnietv) so you can thank (blame?) them for this disaster. go check out their fics!!

There’s a boy who watches Minhyuk from the bus stop across the street. Though, to call him a boy wouldn’t be entirely correct. Every evening as he unboards, Minhyuk spots him under the shelter of the other stop; slender, with the lanky limbs of a tall young man but a youthful, ageless face that throws his appearance into ambiguity. He’s a shock of light hair, the colour of an overcast sky against large brimmed hats, and silk scarves and expensive shades all _black, black, black_. He’s there in the evenings but never the mornings as Minhyuk travels to and from his nine-to-five--watching but never following.

 

Minhyuk almost convinces himself that this figure across the street is a figment of his imagination, part fantasy part fever dream, brought about by his self-induced seclusion, until the day he _doesn’t_ appear proves to be itself an anomaly. Minhyuk waits for the bus to depart, looks both ways, as though in the midst of indulging in a guilty pleasure, and breaks into a light jog across the empty road.

 

He feels fingers grasp at his sleeve, the light scrape of long nails against his wrist through the fabric of his thin sweater, and turns around knowing, through some premonition, that it can only be the boy from the bus stop.

 

“Take me home with you”, he says with a hard candy smile, the corners of plump, red-bitten lips just barely pulling back to show the tips teeth. A tartness that doesn't reach the saccharine of his doe eyes. Minhyuk thinks he looks like a doll--too perfect, as though each of his delicate features were embedded with purpose. Minhyuk thinks he looks like something to be propped up on a shelf and worshipped. His big, big eyes always looking but never seeing, and yet still conveying so much--too much--vulnerability that looks almost out of place on a face that flawless. Minhyuk thinks it’s unnerving to watch him speak, having only seen him silent against the backdrop of bus stops and barren driveways.

 

“Take me home with you”, the boy repeats, and Minhyuk thinks he looks exactly like the type he'd take home with him.

 

 

They fall into an easy routine soon after, as Hyungwon comfortably shimmies his way into a vacancy in Minhyuk’s life, like a puzzle piece he never knew was missing. Despite his appearance, Minhyuk is far from being a socialite, preferring the recluse of his studio apartment where he can peel away his mask. A suit made of skin meant to keep him inside himself.

 

But Hyungwon isn’t by any means an unwelcomed presence. He spends most of the day sleeping, and spends most of his waking hours padding around the room in near silence with insatiable curiosity, resembling a quiet haunting more than a roommate, but a companion all the same. During suspect hours of the night when they catch each other by the shoe rack, each with one sneaker on, he doesn’t ask where Minhyuk goes.

 

Minhyuk reciprocates the gesture all but the first time. Hyungwon had given him a knowing smile then, somehow looking equal parts coy and timid, as though it was something Minhyuk wasn’t yet meant to find out. The more time he spends with the other boy, the more Minhyuk believes Hyungwon’s existence is a contradiction; a magnetizing force that draws him in with greater vigor the more his sense of danger urges him to pull away. A rhetoric that teases, demands answers while simultaneously rejecting them. Minhyuk is fascinated.

 

 

The gig is up fairly quickly. After only a few weeks into his stay, Minhyuk catches Hyungwon in the act. He looks undisputedly feline perched on the balcony railing with impeccable balance, his black silk-clad arms wrapped around the knee he has tucked close under his chin.

 

“Hyungwonnie, what have you done?” Minhyuk coos when Hyungwon turns slightly to reveal the small bird caught between his teeth. He’s already noticed it’s dead before Hyungwon angles his head farther back and drops it onto the tiles, unmoving by Minhyuk’s feet like some kind of offering. Minhyuk shuffles closer until his chest was against Hyungwon’s cool back. The other boy welcomes the contact, leaning back and nuzzling his head against the crook of Minhyuk’s neck.

 

“Was hungry,” he murmurs against Minhyuk’s collar, leaving a smear of blood like a lipstick stain from a secret affair.

 

“What am I going to do with you, Wonnie?” Minhyuk wipes the dribble from the corner of Hyungwon’s mouth, feels the pointed tip of a canine against the pad of his thumb. “If I let you be, would you eat me too?”

 

Hyungwon’s hair tickles Minhyuk’s neck and chin as he shakes his head. “Just birds… other small animals.” Minhyuk searches for insincerity in that voice and finds none, not with those dark eyes peeking up at him through unkempt bangs, round, so round, and reflective like faces of the moon. “Not you. Not a human life. It’s… I can’t, I can’t…”

 

As Hyungwon trails off and his words become small, the ringing in Minhyuk’s ears grows bolder, grander, filling the space in his head with _I can, I can_ . Minhyuk pulls the body in front of him closer to himself, overwhelmed with the urge to protect, feeling his partner’s content sigh as a low hum against his chest. He clings, desperate to keep the pieces of what he has and will come to know as _Hyungwon_ together lest they fall apart, at the cost of undoing worn sutures along his own spine to reveal the bare bones, the skeletons in the closet.

 

“You won’t do something you don’t want to, will you, Minhyuk?”

 

Minhyuk wants nothing more than to tear the skin of his knuckles and scrape the blood from his nails if it means the hands of the monster he held in his own remain guiltless, unsoiled.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hyungwon and minhyuk are gross together, minhyuk meets with hoseok, then hyungwon and minhyuk are gross together again.

Minhyuk has gotten used to leaving and returning from his nightly excursions with little fanfare out of courtesy for the neighbours. He also treads quietly as to not disturb Hyungwon, though he knows the other is awake during those hours. He’s a silent entity occupying his favourite spot on the couch, hunched over his phone and flicking at the screen with a long, bony finger, like little brushstrokes excavating for hidden remains. So it goes without saying that Minhyuk is unsurprised when he finally breaks his streak and tosses a large, black gym bag at Hyungwon’s feet and doesn’t receive much of a reaction. Hyungwon cranes his neck to peek at Minhyuk from where he’s standing, blood-soaked in the doorway.

 

“I came back from the gym,” Minhyuk says.

 

“You don’t go to the gym,” Hyungwon quips, before hopping off the couch. He tugs the hefty bag closer to the center of the room and bends at the waist to unzip it just enough to recognize the contents. “Is this all for me?” he asks, his tone smoothened with a sentimental polish as he takes a few long strides towards Minhyuk, eyeing the red, wet sheen clinging to his frame like a second skin.

 

Hyungwon draws Minhyuk’s palm, bloodied from the sloppy kill, towards his face and presses it against his own warm cheek. He turns Minhyuk’s hand in his own and pulls the long fingers into his mouth to lap at the residual blood. Minhyuk has been out for hours in the September chill and yet his large hand is hot with unexplained fever. Hyungwon chases the heat emanating from his human partner, pressing closer and closer still, mirroring the way his lips ghosts across the webbings between Minhyuk’s fingers. He searches with grazing teeth for traces of the life source, a lethargy settling in between the shallow breaths he takes against the work-roughened knuckles lightly pressed against his nose.

 

“This one's still warm,” Minhyuk says, brushing back a few stray hairs from Hyungwon’s burning forehead with his free hand before letting his fingers trail along equally heated skin to come to a rest against a sharp collarbone. “Come on, before the livor sets in.” 

 

Minhyuk sheds his jacket and slumps against the wall to catch his breath while he watches, fascinated, as Hyungwon crouches by the bag sitting heavy on the floor across the room. He props the upper half of the body up and out of the bag with one arm across its shoulders and tilts the head away from himself, feeling along the network of tendons and muscles in the throat with his free hand. Minhyuk sees him hesitate for brief moment, face contorting into something akin to regret and something akin to yearning, before attaching himself to his quickly cooling meal. It takes him a couple of tries, mouthing at the side of John Doe’s neck and lapping sloppily at sluggishly bleeding wounds, before he gets it right. Minhyuk has never seen a real vampire feed before, but in his mind it was a lot more elegant.

 

Hyungwon pulls away from the body after a few successful gulps, dropping it unceremoniously onto the ground with a shuddering gasp, where it continues to bleed into the hardwood. He swipes the sleeve of his sweater across his chin and neck, only serving to smear the fresh blood that had spilled from his open mouth as he tries to breathe. It’s messy, it’s dirty. Minhyuk thinks he’s a silent horror film, pale like the corpse beside him in the desaturated landscape casted by the moonlight like a projector through the window, turning blood to ink. An unfinished painting, a canvas dripping with still wet paint.

 

He collapses onto his back with a resigned sigh, as though having just completed the most exhausting chore of his life, and stares up at the ceiling in a daze. Minhyuk shuffles away from the wall and to Hyungwon, lying beside him and taking his clammy hand in his own to kiss each unstained knuckle, three bodies in a row of coffins like sardines.

 

“That was the unsexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Minhyuk says.

 

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Hyungwon mumbles and makes a rumbling sound low in his throat that’s halfway between a content sigh and a pur. He brings his other hand to their already intertwined ones, kneads Minhyuk’s palm in between his own, gently tugs his fingers back and forth. Just enough to feel the knuckles writhe beneath his skin and the pads of Hyungwon’s fingers--enough to feel he’s real.

 

“Think you can make less of a mess next time?” Minhyuk jabs playfully, endlessly amused by Hyungwon’s sudden fascination with his hands. He jerks his chin toward the still oozing corpse next to them.

 

“I don’t think I know how to go about any of this.” Hyungwon’s brows furrow, bottom lip jutting out comically as a whine creeps into his voice and spills into the ends of his sentences. “Can I have a kiss?”

 

Minhyuk’s eyes flicker to the patches of drying blood, cracked and flaking, along Hyungwon’s mouth and jaw.

 

“Maybe after you’ve brushed your teeth.”

  
  
  


Minhyuk’s dreamless sleep ends by the buzzing of his phone like a flat, glass hornet pressed against his left cheek. He swipes blindly at the screen, letting the blue light illuminate the red flesh behind his eyelids for a moment before squinting at the seventeen KaKao messages he’s received from Hoseok during the past hour.

 

Minhyuk slips out of bed, sniffs his shirt to confirm the scent of his body wash hasn’t worn off, and scrawls Hyungwon a messy note he knows won’t be read until late that evening.

 

Hoseok is a warm smile full of teeth and a charming guffaw hidden behind eighty kilograms of muscle. He generates his own gravity. Everyone who Minhyuk has ever known who has had the pleasure of meeting Hoseok was drawn, inevitably, into his orbit. Minhyuk was known as the sun, but the sun is indiscriminately nurturing and destructive all at once, warmth and light and annihilation at varying distances. If Minhyuk is the sun, Hoseok is a habitable planet, full of life and joy and the sensibility to keep them both grounded in a harmonic regularity. Finds his curtness and occasional abrasiveness endearing. And because Minhyuk is the sun, he keeps Hoseok at a safe distance.

 

Hoseok is already there when Minhyuk approaches the cafe they agreed to meet at, wearing the same brightness Minhyuk remembers he had from high school. Minhyuk adjusts his watch out of habit, examines his exposed forearms for any spots he might of missed, checks under his fingernails. Hoseok’s expression remains pleasant, unchanged.

 

“Hey,” Hoseok says amiably in his low timbre. “You look good.”   
  
Minhyuk has always been grateful for his friend. Hoseok really has no idea.

 

“What took you so long, asshole? They stopped serving the pancakes an hour ago.” 

 

Minhyuk chooses a spot by the window and waits as Hoseok orders their drinks. He comes back a few moments later with an iced americano for Minhyuk and something pink and frothy for himself. His smile is wide and gummy one that crinkles the bridge of his nose, and he’s plagued with a jitter that tells Minhyuk that he’s itching to talk.

 

He likes listening to Hoseok talk. He has a low, pleasant tone and a sincerity that bleeds into and pinkens every word that spills from his lips as he details, in between sips, the recent events at his primary school classroom. Minhyuk nods and offers helpful interjections as Hoseok mentions how the young, new student who had transferred to this class has been worrying him for a few weeks because she has been so quiet and shy. How he found out recently that they have common fondness for doodling and has slowly gotten her to open up as they shared spare moments in the classroom drawing trees and butterflies and anything she felt like.

 

Minhyuk hears something metallic clang against the linoleum floor, reverberating, followed by a series of hushed apologies. 

 

How Hyunwoo just received a promotion and has been coming home late, and neither of them have the energy for anything other than instant ramen and take-out. How Hyunwoo has taken to eating his paperwork and how terrible it is for him.

 

Maybe he’s heard that wrong.

 

He doesn’t realize he has stopped listening to what Hoseok is saying until the latter begins waving his massive arm in front of his face, nearly knocking over Minhyuk’s iced americano. It’s collected a layer of condensation on the outside and sits puddling on the mahogany, weeping, neglected. Minhyuk is distracted, surroundings turning to a dull ache as his vision zeroes in on a man sitting two tables away, only barely visible behind Hoseok’s large frame, who’s groped one of the baristas when she came to deliver his order. He feels an itch on his palm shaped like a knife handle, and curls his hand into a loose fist to scrape at it.

 

“Earth to Lee Minhyuk. Do you want to report that really interesting space phenomenon you saw just now?”

 

Minhyuk shifts his attention back to the boy in front of him, eyes flickering to the other’s striking combination of neon blue tips against bleach blonde roots. “Did you change your hair?”

 

“Yeah,” Hoseok responds incredulously, eyebrow raised. “It was like this thirty-five minutes ago too. Thanks for noticing.”

 

Minhyuk shrugs and picks up his coffee, cold and slippery against his palm, to take a long sip, humming dismissively around the straw. “It looks good on you.”

 

Hoseok scoffs at the obvious diversion, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes suggests he's unoffended by Minhyuk’s volatile attention span. 

 

“Hyung, would you mind doing me a small favour?”

  
  
  


Hyungwon occasionally watches Minhyuk work, his dark eyes following the sound of crinkling plastic as he treads carefully across the floor and around the body with a practiced precision of a predator that has long learned to hunt. Minhyuk doesn’t mind the audience. He pauses pulling his second glove taut to catch a glimpse of Hyungwon, curled against the armrest of Minhyuk’s loveseat and chewing on the green end of a straw with red-stained teeth. He’s kept himself a comfortable distance from the violence--captures it in a Starbucks tumbler and sips on it with leisure while wrapped in a fleece throw. Minhyuk wants to scoff, but he resumes his work instead.

 

“What flavour are we having tonight?” Minhyuk tosses the question over his shoulder without turning back fully to make eye contact, meaning only to prompt a conversation during an otherwise near silent process.

 

“The shoplifter; the one from three days ago.” Hyungwon mumbles, teeth scraping absentmindedly against the straw and unfocused eyes trained on Minhyuk’s general direction.

 

Minhyuk makes a thoughtful noise at the response but he is paying Hyungwon no more conscious attention than he is receiving. Hyungwon’s mind goes to another place when he feeds. A place that isn’t Minhyuk’s dingy couch that doesn’t match the rug and where he can pretend he isn’t making a meal out of some nameless thief.

 

Minhyuk straps the body in front of him--someone he saw verbally abuse a distressed teen working the Burger King counter--to a retired dental chair and reclines it far enough that the head of his victim lolls pale and lifeless over the large bucket he’s placed underneath it. He positions the head carefully, angling it to reduce spill, then makes his first incision. Minhyuk isn’t a doctor by many means of the word, but several weeks of mistakes has taught him how to be efficient and he watches with a quiet satisfaction as the wound spurts in rhythmic streams into the awaiting vessel, lets livor mortis and gravity do the work. He is a fisherman of people and this is today’s catch.

 

The loud slurp of Hyungwon’s straw drawing more air than liquid causes Minhyuk to turn to his direction, where he finds the other gazing at him with such adoration that he feels his heart beat out of time, a distracted drummer. Hyungwon has a charming, wide smile; the corners of his mouth rise against full cheeks, eyes engulfed with joy until they are two crescents, full of stars--an eclipse. He’s not one to flaunt that kind of smile, and thus Minhyuk regrettably doesn’t see it as often as he likes, but still does his best to mirror it, returning an equally ridiculous grin. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt more fondness for another person than he does in that moment. Lee Minhyuk and Chae Hyungwon in a darkened living room covered in plastic sheets, maybe separated maybe united, by a corpse strapped to a chair and a now slow trickle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're interested you can find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/sigh0nara) where i occasionally post art related to this au


End file.
